Grab, organise and share online information with Clipboard

The default equivalent of jotting down something from a website is to bookmark it – or perhaps copying the website address line and then pasting it into a document. In this workshop we’ll introduce a highly visual alternative called Clipboard. This web service and browser plug-in combination makes it easy to grab part of a web page and save it as a clipping, adding tags to help organise clips and allowing them to be kept as a private collection, shared on Clipboard’s public timeline or via Facebook and Twitter.

Step 1
Launch a web browser and visit www.clipboard.com. When the page loads, click the big green Get Started Now button at the top right. It is possible to register quickly using Facebook credentials; alternatively, click the ‘Register with an email address’ button. At the next screen, fill in the form, with name, email, username and password, and upload a profile photo, if you fancy. Then click Create Account. At the next screen, click the left and right arrows to scroll sideways through the available topics and click the Follow buttons to choose a tag or two (for example, #photography or #funny) and then click Next Step.

Step 2
The following screen displays instructions for adding Clipper, Clipboard’s browser add-on, to the web browser, and what happens next varies depending on which one is being used. With Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), for example, it’s as simple as right-clicking on an empty part of the toolbar and making sure the Favorites bar has a tick next to it, then dragging and dropping the ‘+ clipboard’ button on to the Favorites bar. When IE asks for confirmation, click the Yes button and the Clipper tool will appear on the toolbar.

Step 3
Click the My home button at the bottom right to continue. Clipboard will ask you to verify the email used to sign up in Step 1: find the email in your inbox and click the link it contains. After that, a new browser window will open – click the link there to go back to the Clipboard home page. There’s a selection of clippings already supplied that introduce the way the service works. To continue, click on one.